We asked Dr Michela Bertero and Dr Luiza Bengtsson about the project’s goals, actions and learnings on fostering open science and responsible research and innovation (RRI).

What are the goals of the ORION project?

The goal of ORION is to promote open science, in all its facets and flavors, as a means of increasing collaboration, engagement and transparency in the scientific practices. Our ultimate vision is to bring more science into society and more society into science. We are focusing on life sciences research performing and research funding institutions, which is an ambitious target and an experiment not yet done on such scale. The research we do is highly specialized, focusing on very fundamental molecular mechanisms underlying life and using very complex technologies. It is often difficult for the lay public or other stakeholders, who are not expert in life sciences, to understand what we research on and what its relevance is, since often this research does not lead to short-term impact in our lives. ORION aims to identify what parts of our research processes we could open up and then to engage different actors, educate them in different concepts, ask them for their inputs and opinions, and sometimes even involve them directly in experiments. Fundamental research does have a tremendous long-term impact in our society, and that is why ORION takes up the challenge to engage researchers in a mutual and fruitful dialogue with citizens.

What actions do you take to embed open science and RRI in research policies, practices and processes?

The first step was to identify how much awareness for open science exists in the participating institutions and also how much and what involvement with research the citizens actually want. The results will guide several co-creation experiments in different institutes and countries. We will run public dialogues on disruptive technologies, such as genome editing to understand citizens´ views and reflect on how researchers and policy makers could incorporate them in their work. Funders will promote participatory processes when deciding or evaluating funding calls for projects tackling societal challenges. We have also started interesting citizen science projects, engaging citizens in the scientific experiments so they can also contribute with their ideas and skills for the advancement of knowledge. All of the mentioned exercises are not possible if the researchers and support staff are not on board. Therefore, one of the central activities of the ORION project is also training on tools and concepts of open science for scientists.

How do you approach the different stakeholder groups?

We define which stakeholders we want to approach for each ORION experiment. ORION partners represent already different views, including not only experts in research and funding, but experts in public engagement (VA), patients´ representatives and medical doctors (ANT) and social scientists (CRECIM). We also have a rich network of associated partners that help us to reach very diverse and relevant stakeholders in Europe.

The project aims to open up research institutions to make them more permeable for input from external stakeholders. How do you pursue this goal?

We have already mentioned the different co-creation exercises we are planning. All of these have the support and commitment of the management boards from the participating institutions. The results will serve as guidelines for new public engagement strategies in our institutions.

By creating opportunities and promoting direct collaborations between citizens and scientists we expect long-lasting impacts on how scientists think about their work. In one of the projects we have already conducted, the art-science collaboration as a prelude to the public dialogue, we could observe the change in attitudes in real-time, in all protagonists. In this project, the artist Emilia Tikka, spent three months in our research labs, working on her art-piece on genome editing together with the scientists. The initial clash of cultures turned into mutual understanding and respect for each other’s perspectives, while her art-piece continues to inspire the audience to engage with the societal impact of CRISPR research.

What is the role of libraries and other research infrastructure organizations in this project?

For the researcher training, we work closely with local libraries. After all, this is where we find the experts for research data management and publications, whom the researchers can contact with specific questions.

We are also involving research infrastructure organizations as these are really at the core of our research. We will engage the European Genome Phenome Archive when we will run a public dialogue on medical genomics in Barcelona, we will use specific infrastructure when we will start gathering data from our citizen science projects, and so forth.

What are some lessons learned during the project so far?

The research community is yearning for open science. The interest in our training and the newly launched podcast shows that particularly early-career researchers have the interest and the will to engage with open science practices. However, this is currently not incentivized as a career progression mechanism. Unfortunately, we cannot change that in the course of the ORION project. What we can do is to prepare and engage the individual researchers for the time when it will not be necessary to talk about open science, as it will become equivalent to good quality science.

We are also observing that the citizens are keen on being involved in research. Our Europe-wide survey clearly shows that the public is willing to get personally involved in life sciences research, if this means contributing to greater knowledge for all.

These initial steps indicate that we are on the right track and that our multiple experiments will lead to interesting results we want to share with society.

Dr Luiza Bengtsson is a biochemist turned science communicator. She went from life sciences research uncovering communication channels in cells to creating new channels for dialog between science and society. Luiza’s work, mainly at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association, centers around her motto: more science into society and more society into science, which she lives by organizing large science popularization events, training high school teachers and enabling art-science and citizen science co-operations. In the ORION project, Luiza heads the team responsible for developing training on open science. She is also a co-founder of a professional development company Trekstones and a CEO of BesserWissen e.V., a non-profit organization dedicated to developing and spreading tools for critical thinking.

Dr Michela Bertero is a molecular biologist with several years of experience in research management, strategy and policies. She is currently the head of International and Scientific Affairs at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona (Spain). Her department´s mission is to strengthen the international and interdisciplinary dimension of the institute and create new opportunities for the scientific community by fostering new strategic partnerships and alliances, coordinating international collaborative projects, providing strategic advice and support to the Director and fostering scientific talent through integrated training programmes. She played a fundamental role in the creation of the European alliance in life sciences, called EU-LIFE, that she is now representing in the European Open Science Policy Platform advising Commissioner Moedas. She is also coordinating the H2020 project ORION on Open Science. Prior to joining the CRG, she worked as postdoctoral researcher in molecular and structural biology and she holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology.

]]>Jupyter Notebooks in Higher Educationhttps://genr.eu/wp/jupyter-notebooks-in-higher-education/
Fri, 15 Feb 2019 16:14:48 +0000https://genr.eu/wp/?p=1096Image: Illustration from A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages. ACM, Boston, Alan Kay, 1972. http://www.vpri.org/pdf/hc_pers_comp_for_children.pdf. Thanks to Dr. Andreas Wagner for his contribution and all the pointer from de-RSE email list members. Jupyter Notebooks are a way in which you can write and execute code in the browser. This is a small and …

Thanks to Dr. Andreas Wagner for his contribution and all the pointer from de-RSE email list members.

Jupyter Notebooks are a way in which you can write and execute code in the browser. This is a small and simple step but most definitely not the end of the story. It is worth reflecting that another small step of the editable web ‘a wiki’ from Ward Cunningham in 1994 (Cunningham and Leuf 2001) wasn’t always around and the changes this brought about are plain to see.

First and foremost Jupyter Notebooks (Rule, Tabard, and Hollan 2018) has gained attention in research fields because it offers a route for reproducibility of research results. A Jupyter Notebook file can be downloaded and instantly the package can be run in the browser to generate results, say a chart, while simultaneously the data and code for generating results, such as a chart, can be examined.

How to use Jupyter Notebooks

Jupyter Notebooks and learning

Jupyter Notebooks also have another role and that is as a teaching tool. The same features that make Jupyter a great aid to reproducibility in research also play a pivotal role in it being an effective learning environment, that is combining — data, code, and results like charts — which allow explanation and exploration to coexist1 in the same learning package. For students this means a much more effective learning process and cuts down entry barriers to data science. Researchers in the study of computers and learning have long recognized the benefits of multi-modal learning. Once such early pioneer in the field is the computer scientist Alan Kay, part inventor of the ‘personal computer’, who first outlined the ideas that would become the DynaBook in 1968 and later published as the ACM paper ‘A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages’. (Kay 1972) What was described by Kay as the DynaBook was in part hardware, which became the iPad, but the other parts were about having Jupyter-like functionality, to be able to — run simulations, explore scientific concepts as well as artistic and literary ideas and works — all interactively.

What has been gathered together below are three examples of
Jupyter Notebooks being used in universities for teaching across a wide
spectrum of learning contexts for students and researchers, and across
disciplines from Digital Humanities, to computing, and engineering.

This is only a small sample of what has been ongoing work in many fields for a number of years. If you would like to follow development in the ‘Jupyter and learning’ field then a log of initiatives will be kept on the Generation Research GitLab area.

Text processing in the digital humanities for researchers

Contribution by Dr. Andreas Wagner, Digital Humanities, Max-Planck-Institute for European Legal History

Image: Juan de Solórzano Pereira (1575-1655) was a Spanish jurist who became oidor of Lima and was an early writer on the native law of South America. CC BY 4.0 Roberto Cordier-Biblioteca Nacional de España – http://bdh-rd.bne.es/viewer.vm?id=0000134097&page=1

Text processing at the Max-Planck-Institute for European Legal History

At the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History in
Frankfurt, scholars are regularly interested in using Digital Humanities
methods and resources for their research. To support them in acquiring the
necessary competencies, we have installed an “Interest Group Digital
Humanities” that regularly presents different methods and discusses them
in more detail if there is demand for it. Besides other topics such as
geomapping and database design/querying, *text mining* is one of the more
frequently asked for fields, and thus we have dedicated several sessions to
this field and will continue to do so. One of the early meetings was an
introductory session where legal historians could learn how some simple
analyses and tools are working “under the hood”, but also how they
could, or were supposed to, prepare their texts for such analyses in the first
place.

Many of the activities are reflected on the Interest Group’s wiki , but this particular session was relying on a Jupyter Notebook so that scholars would get somewhat used to seeing and maybe understand some simple code, have an explanation right beside it, and could look it up afterwards or even study it if they had not been able to come to the session.

Generating Software
Tests is in the model of a textbook and is delivered as a learning package type
that is common to Jupyter Notebooks which is to be ‘multi-format’ — website,
PDF, keyboard AKA Jupyter Notebook — with the authors pointing towards the
Jupyter format being ‘interactive’ by adding ‘keyboard’ as a format.

The team have put together an ambitious programme and made a
very public facing learning package, as opposed to how Jupyter is often used in
the higher education context which is for a specific class with additional
face-to-face teaching, or for more ephemeral uses as a teaching aid. Generating Software Tests has been
releasing new chapters every week since the end of October 2018, which are also
accompanied by extensive support material.

Jupyter has been moving forward open learning at pace for
some time and it is a welcome addition to the learning delivery formats
available because of its qualities that allow exploration, i.e., you can really
try things out, but importantly in that it brings ‘data science’ out into the
open. Existing online learning models like the family of MOOCs — self-directed
MOOCs, course-led MOOCs, university MOOCs, community MOOCs, commercial MOOCs —
all of these will benefit from making use of Jupyter.

This set of Python tutorials is robust and well-structured
as any introductory volume on a programming language from a big publishing
house for example like O’Reilly etc. Even through the computer manual or book
has in many ways been superseded by Stack Overflow or Reddit, where specific
answers to questions can be found via search queries. What Jupyter shows here
is that the ability to run see the code and run the code helps take the format
one step on from Stack Overflow, with the added benefit of being concise in its
instructions.

The book qualities — being fully complete, self-contained,
navigable — of this Jupyter publication is reinforced here by its high quality editing
and use of the ‘textbook’ tutorial format, carefully breaking down the topic
into concise ‘cognitive loads’ even though you are being introduced to a
substantial set of ideas and principles. It’s also worth noting if you want to
get a handle of how to use Jupyter this ‘notebook’ has a very good set of
introductions.

For any of you wanting to create PDF paginated versions of a
Jupyter project Thomas Kluyver ‘bookbook’ package is pointed to as the way to
go by the authors. https://github.com/takluyver/bookbook

Footnotes

1. Thanks to Daniel Speicher on the de-RSE list for pointing out the Jupyter Notebook qualities of supporting explanation and exploration.

“The FAIR principles are a set of community-developed guidelines to ensure that data or any digital object are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. The FAIR principles specifically emphasize enhancing the ability of machines to automatically find and use data or any digital object, and support its reuse by individuals. Standards for the description, interoperability, citation etc. are at the core of these principles.”

The Top 10 FAIR Data & Software Global Sprint was held online over the course of two-days (29-30 November 2018), where participants from around the world were invited to develop brief guides (stand alone, self paced training materials), called “Things”, that can be used by the research community to understand FAIR in different contexts but also as starting points for conversations around FAIR.

Sprinters worked off of a primer that was provided in advance together with an online ARDC webinar introducing FAIR and the Sprint titled, “Ready, Set, Go! Join the Top 10 FAIR Data Things Global Sprint.” Groups/individuals developed their Things in Google docs which could be accessed and edited by all participants. The Sprinters also used a Zoom channel provided by ARDC, for online calls and coordination, and a Gitter channel, provided by Library Carpentry, to chat with each other throughout the two-days. In addition, participants used the Twitter hashtag #Top10FAIR to communicate with the broader community, sometimes including images of the day.

Participants greeted each other throughout the Sprint and created an overall welcoming environment. As the Sprint shifted to different timezones, it was a chance for participants to catch up. The Zoom and Gitter channels were a way for many to connect over FAIR but also discuss other topics. A number of participants did not know what to expect from a Library Carpentry/Carpentries-like event but found a welcoming environment where everyone could participate.

The Top 10 FAIR Data & Software Things repository and website hosts the work of the Sprinters and is meant to be an evolving resource. Members of the wider community can submit issues and/or pull requests to the Things to help improve them. In addition, a published version of the Things is available via Zenodo, where you can cite and give credit to the Sprinters, and there are plans to add the material to the Data Management Training Clearinghouse in the coming months.

This blog post originally appeared on Library Carpentries and is reposted with the author’s permission.

The study shows that Germany has a huge amount of catching up to do in comparison with other European countries and that strategically opening the German research and innovation system would lead to gains for society as a whole, as well as locational advantages. The authors shed light on how a strategic opening of science and innovation can be made successful. For this purpose, they have, for the first time, developed a model for strategic openness.

The study is divided into two key parts. The first part focuses on the potential of strategic openness and the second part focuses on the political framework. The second part of the study examines the situation at European level, as well as in three selected countries (Austria, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands). These countries are compared to the situation in Germany. At the end, four recommended actions for Germany are provided.

Open Innovation and Open Science are not yet thought of as linked

The first part of the report includes a bibliometric study. This shows how the fields of Open Science and Open Innovation have become much more prevalent in scientific literature and have grown in importance.

Open Innovation has a significantly higher publication output than Open Science. At the same time, it shows that the related scientific discourses are systematically disconnected, although there are clear parallels between the two, such as the inclusion of external factors. This indicates that both areas are poorly connected with each other from a conceptual point of view. The bibliometric study shows how Open Science and Open Innovation can be brought together.

A model for strategic openness

In order to structure the different aspects of Open Science and Open Innovation, the study proposes a new concept of strategic openness. Three dimensions create a cohesive framework for Open Science and Open Innovation: firstly, “inclusivity and cooperation”; secondly, “accessibility and continued use”; thirdly, “transparency and review”.

The “inclusivity and cooperation” dimension means a fundamental willingness to be open in terms of innovation and to involve new actors, such as people working in other roles, sectors or regions. This is expected to have positive effects, such as increasing the level of innovation, accelerating knowledge production, increasing problem-solving capacity and intensifying knowledge-sharing.

The second dimension of the model is “accessibility and continued use”, which refers to the disclosure of knowledge that was previously only limited in terms of access (such as data) with the goal of contributing to an increase in economic and scientific efficiency, as it becomes (more easily) useable in this way. Another positive aspect is the increased visibility of the actors involved, which can also contribute to overcoming scepticism about science in civil society.

The third dimension, “transparency and review”, focuses on how knowledge was created. Shedding light on the process of knowledge creation makes knowledge more open to scrutiny and increases verifiability for those who are not involved. This contributes to the increased credibility of the actors and the knowledge they generate.

Ambivalent picture: great progress and tendency to be unwilling to cooperate in Germany

In terms of Open Access to science in particular, much progress has been made in terms of the accessibility dimension. On the other hand, cooperation between different research fields in Germany has become increasingly uncommon. The cause of this can be found in the divisions that are present in the research system. This causes a marked institutional separation into foundational and applied research, as well as product development, and leads to the whole system missing out on important value-added potential. Open Science and Open Innovation could also help here.

Further structural problems prevent the dissemination, and thus exploitation, of this potential in Germany. Here we have to look at the insufficient and somewhat stagnating trend of cooperation between science and industry, as well as the lack of willingness to integrate uncommon knowledge providers, even though these provide an opportunity to create new solutions and insights that take social values and benefits into account to a greater extent. The small number of cooperating SMEs shows that an important group is not involved in the innovation process, one which could benefit the most from targeted strategies that seek to increase openness. However, this is hardly surprising, since one of the main issues with funding policy is that funding programmes are aimed in particular at increasing the competitiveness of industry and large businesses. Service sectors and new, digitally supported methods designed to encourage Open Innovation receive much less systematic support.

As the study shows, disseminating and promoting Open Science and Innovation strategies is an important political and social field of action. Germany does not currently play a leading role in this internationally and should therefore take targeted measures to strengthen its research and innovation system by opening-up and further developing funding programmes that promote greater use of the potential of Open Science and Innovation practices.

Four recommended actions for implementing the model

The authors provide four recommended actions for science, industry and politics to take to successfully implement their model of strategic openness:

Developing a national political framework for strategic openness: business, the scientific field and society should work together to define potentials and fields of action in this strategy development process.

Extending the national research and innovation monitoring system: thus allowing the effects of open research to be monitored more closely.

Involving uncommon actors in research and innovation projects: in particular, this relates to the gateways between business and science. In addition, the integration of user organisations or representatives in panels that assess scientific programmes and projects is interesting for validating the relevance of research projects at an early stage.

Further developing transfer structures to cooperation centres: There should not only be a transfer of scientific findings to the economy and society, but this should also happen the other way round, with new research questions being transferred to the scientific community. Scientific institutions are called upon to further develop their absorption capacity for external knowledge and to build Open Innovation skills in order to be able to develop into very significant Open Innovation hubs and play a key role in the innovation ecosystem despite massive competition from new actors in the field of knowledge creation.

]]>Imagine a Research Future Defined by Open Values: Introducing the Open Science MOOChttps://genr.eu/wp/imagine-a-research-future-defined-by-open-values-introducing-the-open-science-mooc/
Fri, 01 Feb 2019 11:56:05 +0000https://genr.eu/wp/?p=1040Image: UN Sustainable Development Goals https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/ The world of research is not working as well as it could be. On all sides we see issues with reproducibility, questionable research practices, barriers and walls, wasteful research, and flawed incentive and reward systems. If we want research to be more effective in helping to solve the problems …

Tennant, Jon. ‘Imagine a Research Future Defined by Open Values: Introducing the Open Science MOOC’, 2019. https://doi.org/10.25815/6hyr-g583.

The world
of research is not working as well as it could be. On all sides we see issues
with reproducibility, questionable research practices, barriers and walls,
wasteful research, and flawed incentive and reward systems. If we want research
to be more effective in helping to solve the problems our world currently
faces, we have to be better.

This is
what we are trying to help with through the Open Science MOOC. We understand that expectations are changing in
how to perform and communicate research, as it adapts to a new age of Web-based
technologies. Modern research now demands transparency, collaboration, and a
more continuous process. At the Open Science MOOC, we want to help develop a
peer-to-peer, value-based community that works towards better science for
society.

Our
vision of the future and ultimate goal? To help make ‘Open’ the default setting
for all global research. We aim to achieve this through creating, connecting,
and fostering a welcoming and supporting community; a community based around
good tools, teachers, and role models. Most importantly, a community that is
fundamentally built upon a solid values-based foundation of freedom and
equitable access to research.

In late 2018, we launched our pilot module on Open Source and Open Research Software, using the open source platform Eliademy. At the time of writing this, already more than 400 participants have enrolled in the module, dozens have completed the practical tasks, and we have already handed out the first certificates of completion. One major goal we had here was to expose the ‘human element’ behind open source software, and made this introductory video to help with that:

Our
community is based around learning, sharing, and collaboration. It is based
around empowering researchers with knowledge and skills to save time and
effort, solve research problems, and advance global research as a collective. At
the present, we have developed everything as openly as possible. All content
has been created collaboratively and in the open using our open GitHub project, and all
core communications through our open Slack channel. All content we create is licensed either CC0 or
CC-BY for maximum re-use, and is constantly released as it is built. The course
itself is self-paced, so that anyone can join and complete it whenever they
like. And of course, it is totally free to everyone. We aim to be as open and
accessible as possible.

In the near future, we expect to launch our next module on Open Principles, and are just putting the finishing touches on the content there. We hope that you can join us, and become part of our wonderful community. The future is open, and we want you to be part of it!

Prof Dr Heike Neuroth is Deputy Chairwoman of RDA Germany and a member of the GO FAIR steering committee. In the interview, she shares her assessment of promoting FAIR Data and Open Science.

Ms. Neuroth, on the basis of your many years of experience in the scientific field, how, in your opinion, can good scientific practices be promoted with regard to research data management?

Germany seems to be already quite well set up to me. There are currently a number of funding programmes both at the German Research Foundation (DFG) and at the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). In addition, there is the newly released programme support for the National Research Data Infrastructure. All in all, there has been much activity in this regard in Germany, analogous to European and international countries, for over 10 years. The area that certainly lags far behind is the field of teaching, further education, training and thus a systematic introduction of good scientific practices in dealing with data. Nobody benefits when numerous scientists employed on a temporary basis acquire expertise in the field of research data management and FAIR as part of a third-party funded project only to leave academia again at a later date. That is not sustainable. We need dedicated study programmes in the field of data management in addition to the courses in the fields of data science, data analysis, data engineering etc. that are currently being established all over Germany. Only then can the scientific community be supported on a day-to-day basis so that the benefits are visible, for example when sharing or reusing research data. And then, with the help of FAIR, we really get visibly closer to the European Open Science Cloud vision.

There are currently a number of ongoing initiatives and projects dealing with the topic of research data management. As Deputy Chairwoman of RDA Germany and a member of the GO FAIR steering committee, how do you think RDA and the GO FAIR initiative complement each other in Germany?

The German “node” of the international “Research Data Alliance – Research Data Sharing without barriers” brings together interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary experts from a wide variety of research data fields. This initiative has been established for some years now. The European Commission has also been funding EU projects for years and, as of the start of 2018, Germany has officially launched a German version that is similar to initiatives in France, Austria or Finland. Thus, we have an outstanding example of the so-called “bottom-up” approach: entire specialist disciplines and communities were “engaged” conduct a broad and in-depth exploration of various aspects of research data and management. The GO FAIR initiative is relatively new and aims to implement the FAIR principles, so to bring them to life and make them actionable. On the one hand, we therefore have a dynamic and active global community and, on the other hand, concrete FAIR principles. It will be very exciting to see how quickly and actively the German RDA community picks up FAIR, what their experiences are and what recommendations are made for future implementation as a result. This will take place, for example, in a targeted manner in the GO FAIR implementation networks.

The establishment of a National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) has gained momentum through the announcement of the federal-state agreement. What role do you think GO FAIR can play in establishing the NFDI?

With the establishment of the NFDI we have a great opportunity to implement the FAIR principles concretely in Germany at the relevant speed and adapted to the relevant academic culture for each academic community and each (potential) NFDI consortium. Special support measures from GO FAIR are certainly helpful and welcome. In addition, it would be perfect if GO FAIR could coordinate the establishment of the FAIR principles in Germany, especially in the context of the NFDI, in order to derive so-called “Lessons Learned”, can then be fed back into European discussions, EOSC developments and internationally. Even if each FAIR criterion is very specific, there may be different approaches to implementation from discipline to discipline that are sensible from the perspective of the academic culture in question.

In addition, we certainly need a “nonpartisan” or objective perspective or accompanying research that addresses questions like: How much fair is fair? How much does it cost us as a society to provide everything (services, data, metadata) fairly and what do we lose in this process? How can a process to make things fairer be supported across academic cultures, are there generic services and (training) measures that provide fair support? Of course, this list of questions is not exhaustive. But GO FAIR could initiate or monitor the communication and discussion process here. Concrete recommendations for subsequent funding priorities or accompanying research would help to better understand the significance and cultural change initiated by FAIR and increase acceptance beyond eligibility criteria. It would also be desirable to include relevant stakeholders from outside the scientific community, from industry, civil society etc. If citizens could use their local town’s data portals correctly, for example, they would be able to gain an understanding of specific regional issues with the help of the ideal data provided.

At the same time, cross-border efforts are also being made both by science, for example at EU level with the EOSC, and by business, for example Google Data Search. What challenges do you foresee for science in terms of pressing on with its offers?

I don’t actually think that this is really about “pressing on”. Of course, we have to be careful that FAIR does allow scientists to reuse findings and results, for example to be able to reuse valuable research data at no cost in order to generate better business offers on a one-sided basis. I think it would be more useful in general if cooperation happened on equal terms. Google Data Search will not replace NFDI and will not be its competitor. And it’s true that scientists are primarily interested in publications (articles and data) because these things are THE currency in our community. And businesspeople naturally have an interest in maximising profits by providing a good service. However, there are many topics that are researched and developed in cooperation in this area of conflict and that can therefore be of benefit to both sides. Digital datafication is a big challenge for us all. One of the biggest future challenges might be, for example, the quality and trustworthiness of findings that based on large volumes of data and (automatic) processing of such data.

Heike Neuroth is W3 Professor of Information Science at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam. Previously she worked at the Göttingen State and University Library as Head of Research and Development from 1997 to 2015. During this time she was also a member of the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL) for the Max Planck Society. Since the start of the TextGrid project in 2005, she has been involved in the development of digital research environments and, since 2008, the start of the infrastructure project DARIAH, in the development of digital research infrastructures. She leads various projects in the field of digital humanities and research data (management) and is a member of various national and international expert committees. Heike Neuroth recently advocated the establishment of the “Digital Data Management” master’s programme as a cooperation between the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam and the Humboldt University of Berlin (HU).

GO FAIR Initiative: Germany, France and the Netherlands have joined the initiative to promote the implementation of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and “FAIR use of research data”. They consider the GO FAIR initiative to be an ideal trailblazer and have set up an International Coordination and Support Office. The Office’s mission is to build a global network of scientific communities and research infrastructures and to advance the acceptance and application of FAIR principles.

The FAIR Principles are the principles that maximise the sustainable reusability of data. FAIR stands for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. The use of these principles ensures cross-disciplinary and cross-border access to data and utilisation of data.

]]>News on Science 2.0 and Open Science (Newsletter January 2019)https://www.leibniz-science20.de/news-on-science-2-0-and-open-science-newsletter-january-2019/
https://www.leibniz-science20.de/news-on-science-2-0-and-open-science-newsletter-january-2019/#respondThu, 31 Jan 2019 08:40:54 +0000http://www.leibniz-science20.de/?p=4366Around the Research Alliance and it’s partners

Open Science Conference 2019: Registration open!

The registration for our 6th Open Science Conference is possible now. It is dedicated to the Open Science movement and provides a unique forum for researchers, librarians, practitioners, infrastructure providers, policy makers, and other important stakeholders to discuss the latest and future developments in Open Science. The conference will take place from 19-20 March 2019 in Berlin. You can register here. Early Bird Tickets are available until the 8 February.

Date: 19-20 March 2019, Berlin
Hashtag: #osc2019

Barcamp Open Science 2019: Registration open!

You can now register for our Barcamp Open Science. It is dedicated to the Open Science movement and open to everybody interested in discussing, learning more about, and sharing experiences on practices in Open Science. We would like to invite researchers and practitioners from various backgrounds to contribute their experience and ideas to the discussion. The barcamp will bring together both novices and experts and its open format supports lively discussions, interesting presentations, development of new ideas, and knowledge exchange. Though, previous knowledge on Open Science is not mandatory. The barcamp is open to all topics around Open Science that the participants like to discuss. This year’s ignition talk will be given by Claudia Göbel (Museum für Naturkunde – Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science, Berlin) and addresses the role of “community science” and Open Science. You can register here.

Date: 18 March 2019, Berlin
Hashtag: #oscibar

2nd round of MOOC “Science 2.0 and open research methods”

Within the framework of the EU Horizon 2020 project MOVING, a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) on “Science 2.0 and open research methods” is being developed and implemented at the Media Centre of the TU Dresden. After a successful first round of the MOOC with approx. 150 participants, the second supervised round has been running since 21 January 2019. An entry into the current course is possible at any time under this address. The course will be held in English, free of charge, and is aimed primarily at doctoral students and young scientists. Participants who actively participate in the course can obtain a certificate of attendance.

Conference Call: Open Science in Psychology 2019

As a response to the replication crisis in psychology, the last six years witnessed the development and implementation of various standards of open science, most notably replicability projects, pre-registrations, registered reports, open data, reproducible scripts, as well as transparency and openness promotion guidelines for scientific journals. It is yet unclear to which extent the implementation of these methods have changed the way how psychological research is carried out and what we have learned so far about the stability and generalizability of psychological phenomena. The general goal of this conference from 12-14 March 2019 is to give a relatively broad overview of the achievements, the prevailing problems and open science standards.

Deadline Call for Papers: 31 January 2019
Registration: will open on the 7 February 2019

GenR – Latest Blogposts

New GenR Theme: Integrating Open Science Learning into Higher Education

The Open Science learning theme will take two approaches to the question of how to integrate Open Science practices into higher education. The first, will be to examine ways for students to get on board — using Open Science methods, using open source tools, or being made aware of how to get ‘more’ credit and attribution. The second approach, being about trends and innovations in ways of teaching, for example ‘The Carpentries’ an open peer-learning network for data, software, and library skills with the formula of being ‘welcoming’ and making good use of the wealth of teaching methods available.

Sabine Barthold and Franziska Günther explore how they see MOVING MOOC, alongside other Open Science initiatives, as contributing to closing the research skills gap between what Open Science has on offer for the future of research and what is being delivered for students and young researchers in universities now — with the aim to providing a ‘safe space’ to up their open collaborative science skills. To use William Gibson’s much used adage “The future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed”.

If you want to contribute an article on GenR please contact the editor Simon Worthington.

Open Science in General

It’s time to update our understanding of scientific impact

New digital research infrastructures and the advent of online distribution channels are changing the realities of scientific knowledge creation and dissemination. Yet, the measurement of scientific impact that funders, policy makers, and research organizations perpetuate fails to sufficiently recognize these developments. This situation leaves many researchers stranded as evaluation criteria are often at odds with the reality of knowledge creation and good scientific practice. Sascha Friesike, Benedikt Fecher and Gert G. Wagner argue in this article that a debate is urgently needed to redefine what constitutes scientific impact in light of open scholarship.

“When You Use Social Media You Are Not Working”: Barriers for the Use of Metrics in Social Sciences

Steffen Lemke, Maryam Mehrazar, Athanasios Mazarakis, and Isabella Peters conducted qualitative interviews and online surveys with researchers to identify the concerns which inhibit the use of social media and the utilization of metrics for research evaluation in the Social Sciences. By analyzing the response data from the interviews in conjunction with the response data from the surveys, they identify the key concerns that inhibit social scientists from (1) applying social media for professional purposes and (2) making use of the wide array of metrics available.

Researcher Engagement with Data Management

In a new project the Research Data Alliance aims to collect case studies from different organizations around the globe on how to engage with the research community about research data management. By asking various questions about the models used and also about the organizational context, they hope to create a useful resource for organizations which are looking to increase their engagement with their research communities. Read more about the survey here.

Open science and codes of conduct on research integrity

The purpose of this article by Heidi Laine is to examine the conceptual alignment between the ethical principles of research integrity and Open Science. Research integrity is represented by four general codes of conduct on Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR), three of them international in scope, and one national. A representative list of ethical principles associated with Open Science is compiled in order to create categories for assessing the content of the codes. According to the analysis, the current understanding of RCR is too focused on traditional publications and the definition of research misconduct to fully support Open Science.

Data Management Expert Guide

CESSDA released a Data Management Expert Guide designed by European experts to help social science researchers make their research data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR). If you follow the guide, you will travel through the research data lifecycle from planning, organizing, documenting, processing, storing, and protecting your data to sharing and publishing them. Taking the whole roundtrip will take you approximately 15 hours.

A self-experiment in fake science: the tricks of predatory journals
How do predatory journals work, and what needs to be done to place a publication here? In a self-experiment a research group from the ZBW has generated a computer written article and submitted it to predatory journals. Read about their experience in this article from ZBW MediaTalk.

The infrastructures CESSDA, CLARIN and DARIAH under the umbrella of the EURISE Network, the European Research Infrastructure Software Engineers’ Network, invite you to participate in their joint workshop on Digital Infrastructure Sustainability, an initiative funded by the DESIR project. The workshop will take place in Utrecht, NL, on March 12 (from 15:30) and March 13 (until 15:00), 2019. Some of the topics we would like to discuss are: Developer Guidelines and Best practices; Software Quality Measures and Assessment; Infrastructure Service Management; Infrastructure Security; Business Models and Sustainability; What role do Research Infrastructures play in Research Software Engineering and more.

About the EURISE Network:

The infrastructures CESSDA, CLARIN and DARIAH develop and provide services by and for the research community of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. While their individual foci address different scholarly needs of the various disciplines, the underlying technological challenges of distributed digital infrastructures are very similar. The EURISE Network was established to facilitate the collaboration in this area and to align technological strategies among the infrastructures and with the wider Research and Software Engineering Community and their intersection in particular.

About the event:

Following their common workshop on “Software Sustainability: Quality and Re-Use” in 2017 they created the European Research Infrastructure Software Engineers’ Network. Moving on from concrete issues of software development, this second workshop will address a variety of questions relating to infrastructure operation. This includes both technical and administrative matters that need to be addressed to provide high-quality services for the European Open Science Cloud. The topics range from technical requirements to meeting the EOSC standards through administrative aspects of service management up to suitable business models.